The Imperial Origins of Feudal America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Any politician can cook up a run o' the mill recession, but it requires the GOP to revert an entire people to feudalism. Our status as vassal of China is the evidence and result of our feudal status. GOP policies from which a ruling elite of just one percent benefit are responsible; the results may be seen at the CIA's 'World Fact Book' which lists China at the very top with the World's largest positive Current Account Balance and the U.S. on bottom with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance. Related to this is China's support for the U.S. dollar, a situation that China tolerates so that American consumers can buy Chinese product at Wal-Mart. If China should find this arrangement inconvenient, as many have said it is becoming, then China may 'pull the plug' and the dollar will collapse.

The economic decline of America is behind and the result of U.S. imperialism, a path about which we were well warned by a man that I have called the 'last honest Republican' ---Dwight David Eisenhower.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only ineffective cooperation with fellow-nations.

Third: Any nation’s right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

--Ike's Cross of Iron speech

My facebook friend, calling himself Abbie Hoffman, points an accusing finger at 'military Keynesianism', also called 'barracks socialism':

"One could argue that the US got addicted to it after WWII, that we haven't resolved the issues and problems of the postwar era. Maybe that's obvious?"

That said, we have a long history of war-profiteering stretching back to the American Civil War, and a war about ever generation of our history.

--"Abbie Hoffman"(FB id),

The recovery from the Great Depression was slow. World War II created a fully employed economy seemingly overnight. New industries sprang up, new products invented, most memorably the Higgins Boat, the landing craft, manufactured in Louisiana remembred primarily for the drop down front that allowed US troops to disembark on the heavily fortified beaches of Normandy.

The lesson learned was the wrong one. A war time economy like that created in response to Pearl Harbor cannot last. Perpetual prosperity via Orwellian perpetual war is not possible.

It [military Keynesianism] unfolded primarily during George W. Bush's administration with legislation signed in to law by William Jefferson Clinton and the bills to continue this trend are still on the books! Scary, hey? This is why we have to break from spending our energy fighting the left vs. the right fight because it's just an illusion of smoke and mirrors and is taking our focus off of the real culprit; the super class, those who posses over 80% of the world's money supply and ehat needs to be done to reverse the ugly economic trends we now suffer.

--Nancy My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Oligarchy ~ Purchased By ‘The MIC’

Many colonial businesses, including Shipbuilders, made a good living off the 'Revolutionary' war. Rome, arguably, had been bankrupt long before the Praetorian Guard auctioned it all off to Didius Julianus for Greek currency --not worthless Roman sesterces. Much earlier, Rome invaded Dacia for its gold. Rome makes for thrilling movies and gripping TV series. But actually living in it was not nearly so glamorous. Like the U.S. today a tiny and shrinking aristocracy alone benefited from Roman conquest. The currency was all but worthless. Poverty was rampant and growing as 'aristocrats' seized small farms!

Empire is surely the last step toward feudalism --at least in the 'empire' scenario. A 'feudal' Europe filled the vacuum resulting from the fall of decadent Rome. A 'feudal America' may arise amid the ruins of the huge, flashy skyscraper-filled corporate empire of America. In his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire', Gore Vidal puts a date upon the fall of the American Republic --1950. The 'imperial system', the 'security state' resulting, became the self-reinforcing mechanism by which the US would justify intervention against its 'interests' in far flung reaches --Korea, Viet Nam, the Middle East. The last President to eschew American interventions in various crises was JFK who refused US air cover for a CIA operation called the Bay of Pigs.

Many believe that one motive of several for his assassination, his cold blooded murder in Dallas on November 22, 1963. And Mr. Bugliosi, please don't try to tell me that Mr. Zapruder's camera movements 'explain' the apparent motion of JFK's head backward. I have practiced high-level, exacting photography with still cameras of all formats from 8mm motions picture to 4x5 large format product photography for commercial clients in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and Houston. Put me on the stand as an expert and I will testify, based upon my own frame by frame analysis of high rez Zapruder images that there is simply no way that camera movement will account, i.e, explain the movement of JFKs head backward upon being hit on Z -313. More on that in a future article.

Vidal points out that the USA has intervened aggressively, waging at least 300 wars in every part of the world despite the fact that the US Constitution requires a Declaration of War by Congress. The last time an American president sought and obtained congressional approval for a war was in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Today --US Presidents don't bother. My first recollection of the word 'intervention' was the use of US troops in Lebanon by Dwight David Eisenhower. It was not a war, we were told. It was just an 'intervention'.

Later, the US would intervene in Viet Nam, a failed and lost war, a perpetual war by Orwellian standards, a tragic loss of thousands of American lives for no good purpose whatsoever. When the US eventually withdrew, the 'two Viet Nams' united, predictably and what had been a killing field is now a prosperous and peaceful nation. We, America, lost that war but from the ashes a prosperous nation flourished. But --it must be pointed out --that result is an effect of our leaving Viet Nam --not our staying. Based on the facts of history, I will wager that when the U.S. leaves the middle east and the CIA is, likewise, muzzzled or, better, smashed 'into a thousand pieces, that part of the world, too, will rebound and prosper.

It is time that someone speak the unspeakable and painful truth: American citizens, some of them my classmates, were sacrificed for nothing in Viet Nam! American citizens, primarily those who could not afford to stay in school and thus 'earn' a deferment, were sacrificed for vainglorious, imperial ambitions. I deny that 'right' of nations and/or empires to to sacrifice its youth, its talent, its wealth for the benefit of the very, very few, an 'elite' few.

Viet Nam was the crime of murder committed by arrogant, vainglorious empire upon its people. It was a crime upon the people by the privileged which makes up just one percent of the US population. Shame! It is time that a real revolution --not a focus group approved, cooked up, top down bullshit propaganda stunt called 'tea baggers' --to put an end to his Leviathan called 'empire'!

'Tea Baggers' will not solve the problems of America

They are, rather a part of the problem.Tea baggers embrace a panoply of lies and various forms of bigotry to include racism at home and the demonization of 'Islam' abroad. Tea baggers are wrong, wrong-headed, mis-informed, perhaps, just plain stupid. They are not the solution; they ARE the problem, a cancer, a sore, an open wound, a scab that was picked.

Keynes himself would not have approved of 'Military Keynesianism' which follows from misconceptions about Keynes, often thought of by 'conservatives' as being just short of communist if not communist outright. It must be pointed out however, that it was a Republican --Richard NIxon --who opined "We are all Keynesians now!"

NOT!

Militarists, by way of the lobbies who benefit most from military spending, 'hijacked' Keynes and drag out his corpse to justify increases in the huge US military budget. Keynes, himself, would have known better. Keynes would have supported expansions of the economy but, as Gore Vidal pointed out, military spending actually represents a contraction --not an expansion, certainly not an expansion that benefits anyone but the rich ruling elite of just one percent of the total US population.

A 'tank', Gore says, is an economic black hole. And so it is returning nothing but 'booty' benefiting only the ever shrinking elite. During the Reagan years, an elite of just 20 percent benefited from the highly touted but unfair and unjust tax cuts. Everyone else lost ground as wealth trickled UP --not down! Things are worse now! Last time I checked, just one percent of the total US population owned more than about 95 percent or more of the rest of us combined. That is called an 'L - curve' in contrast to the normal distribution curve commonly referred to as a 'Bell Curve'. This outcome is the opposite of Keynesianism --an effective contraction of moneys spent, a contraction of the economy as a whole. The L - curve is the result.

The MIC will always create isolated pools here and there. For example, every half-assed town in TX used to compete, lobby and scramble for a 'military base'. Local businesses love it until the base closes down at which time the localized bubble bursts. It is a phony prosperity based upon a bubble that, of late, is created by war crimes. I always hated base towns where merchants always raised prices upon news of military pay raises and cut back jobs upon news of troop reductions.

As odious as are the 'military economies' found in base towns, congressmen exploit local fears of base closings, 'baracks' economics at its worst. Almost every congressman I knew in Texas would campaign on promises of new bases and/or expansion of current bases. Clearly --the modern Praetorians were not, are not content with a one-time sell-out; rather, they conduct an an on-going auction of empire. It's called Congress. Are we beyond reform? We will have to begin and/or restore some of the industries we've lost to China and Japan from scratch. Who will invest in us? Can we trust the liars and clowns who created all this mess to reform themselves? I doubt it.

My friend Abbie wrote: "The rich are going to be holding monopoly money". Indeed, and that is yet another way in which the rich will have screwed us over. The rich will sellout short and thus get even richer. That will, of course, result in a monetary collapse that will swamp everyone. Right now, we are all playing chicken. Millions --who bought into this while thinking themselves rich --will learn otherwise and quickly. As Billie Holiday sang: God bless the child that's got his own!

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

How China Partnered with the GOP to Screw America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Chinese rulers and the US elites partnered to enslave US workers and consumers. As a result, the US became a vassal state of China, a huge population which props up the buck so that it can sell us junk via Wal-Mart.

These deals were all worked out with China by Bush Sr et al in the years following Nixon's infamous visit to the forbidden city. In these talks, US leaders, primarily the right wing/GOP, the US consumer and laborer was sold out. The US would become a vassal state, a slave state, a consumer society whose raison d'etre was to buy Chinese junk. The big losers are US workers and consumers.

I work at Wal-Mart (I'm involved in the UFCW's effort to organize W-M). One day, right after I was hired, I went around on my lunch break and just sort of randomly looked at where a whole bunch of products were made.

I think I found a blender that had been made in Malaysia. EVERYTHING else had been made in China.

I wonder how the typical US consumer would feel about Wal-Mart if it were named, say, US Corporate Capital & Chinese Slave Labor Coooperative?
--John Carter, on Facebook

The US used to make some of the products --appliances, electronic gear et al --that are now dumped on the US via an economic blight called Wal-Mart! The US ruling elite resented the high wages paid to unionized workers in affluent America. Nixon, Reagan et al solved the US labor 'problem'!

The solution: EXPORT US JOBS TO CHINA!

China pays slave wages and dumps the resulting cheap product on a US which produces very little these days. Concurrently, there are fewer futures, fewer opportunities, declining hope, rising despair --all the result of some thirty or forty years of right wing bullshit, lies, crookery and outright fraud. The GOP, for example, is not a political party. It is a crime syndicate and a kooky cult to boot!

The tragic truth can be found in black and white at the CIA's World Fact Book which lists the US at the bottom of the list with the world's largest negative current account balance, formerly called the balance of trade deficit.

While the US was spending time, resources and personnel in running 'elections' for its corrupt clients in Afghanistan and Iraq, and participating in pointless mediations between its intransigent Israeli partner and its impotent Palestinian client, the South Korean government backed a consortium headed by the Korea Electric Power Corporation in its successful bid on the $20.4 billion dollar nuclear power deal, opening the way for other billion-dollar contracts in the region (FT - page 13).
...
In contrast, the US is a declining world power with a deteriorating society resulting from its military-driven empire building and its financial-speculative centered economy:

1. Washington pursues minor military clients in Asia; while China expands its trading and investment agreements with major economic partners - Russia, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.Washington drains the domestic economy to finance overseas wars. China extracts minerals and energy resources to create its domestic job market in manufacturing.
2. The US invests in military technology to target local insurgents challenging US client regimes; China invests in civilian technology to create competitive exports.
3. China begins to restructure its economy toward developing the country's interior and allocates greater social spending to redress its gross imbalances and inequalities while the US rescues and reinforces the parasitical financial sector, which plundered industries (strips assets via mergers and acquisitions) and speculates on financial objectives with no impact on employment, productivity or competitiveness.
4. The US multiplies wars and troop build-ups in the Middle East, South Asia, the Horn of Africa and Caribbean; China provides investments and loans of over $25 billion dollars in building infrastructure, mineral extraction, energy production and assembly plants in Africa.
5. China signs multi-billion dollar trade and investment agreements with Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, securing access to strategic energy, mineral and agricultural resources; Washington provides $6 billion in military aid to Colombia, secures seven military bases from President Uribe (to threaten Venezuela), backs a military coup in tiny Honduras and denounces Brazil and Bolivia for diversifying its economic ties with Iran.
6. China increases economic relations with dynamic Latin American economies, incorporating over 80% of the continent's population; the US partners with the failed state of Mexico, which has the worst economic performance in the hemisphere and where powerful drug cartels control wide regions and penetrate deep into the state apparatus. --Information Clearing House, The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning, James Petras

The US right wing robbed the US population with "trickle down theory" and other nonsense utterly unsupported with fact or evidence:

In the late 1970s, the top one percent of the US population held 13 percent of the wealth; in 1995 it held 38 percent. [Source: Source: Levy, Frank. The New Dollars and Dreams ].

• The top ten percent of the US population owns 81.8 percent of the real estate, 81.2 percent of the stock, and 88 percent of the bonds. [Source: Federal Reserve Bank data in Left Business Observer, No. 72, Apr. 3, 1996, p. 5].
• One percent of the US population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth. [Source: Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: Harper Business, 1993].
• The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent....
• Since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most. They have just 3.6 percent of national income, down from 4.4 percent a quarter century ago.
• Indeed, the top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined...Rebecca Blank, who recently left the President's Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out, ‘We've gone back to levels of income and wealth inequality that this country hasn't seen since the teens and 1920s.’" [Source: Merrill Goozner, Crash of '99?, Salon.com, Oct. 1, 1999; addendum: since 1999, the date the source was published, the situation is much, much worse. Today --just ONE PERCENT own more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. GOP incompetence and criminality moves so fast these days, it's hard to keep up!].

The top one percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 40 percent. [Source: Korten, David. When Corporations Rule the World, p. 108].
Federal Reserve median family net worth by percentile for 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001 (Federal Reserve Bulletin January 2003, pp. 1-36). Note the small gains for the bottom 75% of the population and larger gains for the upper 25% and that the 1998 to 2001 gains were largest. 

--US Wealth Distributions 1989-2001

Republicans bought the scam because it made them feel good about being greedy, shallow bastards. The appeal is obvious: trickle down rationalized greed but only after the fact; it made one feel good about one's worst impulses, motives, and elitist bigotry.

BBC: Al Qaeda NEVER Existed!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The BBC had revealed that Al Qaeda is a creation of US propaganda, in fact, a term never used by Bin Laden until after 911. The implications of the BBC documentary are enormous. It means that the US government of George W. Bush is guilty of the crimes of mass murder, high treason with respect to 911 and war crimes with respect to the mass murder of Iraqi civilians who had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. The specific crimes are violations of U.S. Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 which prescribes the penalty of death for violations thereof!

Bush --you and your administration are in deep shit! An ever angrier American population will --one day --bring you and your CIA co-conspirators to justice. In the meantime, I suggest that all members of the Bush administration look up the relevent federal laws, some of which prescribe death. Start with US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441.

Al Qaeda NEVER Existed!

(a) Offense. - Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--U.S.C. § 2441 : US Code - Section 2441: War crimes

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Spread the word

Demand that Obama End Bush's Policies and War Crimes

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

I did not support Obama so that the US could continue Bush's criminal policies! I most certainly did not and do not support the commission of new war crimes, aggression, or atrocities!

US President Barack Obama personally issued the order for US air strikes in Yemen last Thursday which killed scores of civilians, including women and children.

US warplanes used cruise missiles against alleged Al Qaeda camps in the Abyan village of al Maajala, some 480 kilometers southeast of the capital Sana’a, and in the Arhab district, 60 kilometers to the northeast of Sana’a. The US strikes were apparently coordinated with the US-backed dictatorship of Yemen President Ali Abdallah Saleh, whose military forces attacked the bombed towns as well as a third village, resulting in the deaths of some 120 people, according to Yemen opposition spokesmen.

Local officials and witnesses in the area of Mahsad, the site of the heaviest US bombardment, put the number of those killed at more than 60 and said the dead were mostly civilians. They denied that the target was an al Qaeda stronghold.

--Obama ordered US air strikes on Yemen By Barry Grey

When one's own country is wrong, it is one's patriotic duty to protest. I had hoped Obama would not become the new LBJ --stuck with and blamed for GOP wars of aggression accompanied by heinous war crimes by the US military and the world's largest and best financed terrorist organization --THE CIA! [See: Kangas, A Timeline of CIA Atrocities]

Three of the seven--George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden--were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: "There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused."

When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory "respect" for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, "I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build."

That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule. While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that "nobody is above the law," there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs--no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further "preliminary investigation." What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate CIA's destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of "high-value detainees."

--Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

US 'Presidents' have reason to be afraid of the CIA. The last President to threaten the CIA with being smashed 'into a thousand pieces' was JFK. He was murdered in downtown Dallas and a 'lone scapegoat' had been set up to take the fall.

Without a bullet that can be proven to have been at the scene of the crime, the government would have had no case against Lee Harvey Oswald, tried in absentia in the media because he was murdered and murdered before he could talk. Conveniently! The government needed a piece of hard evidence --a magic bullet'!

They got one! Conveniently!

The government needed a truly magical bullet that did magical things --the work of six or seven other bullets most which got beat up and deformed in the line of duty.
Arlen Specter must be credited with concocting the theory that a single 'magical' bullet could smash bone and cartilage and emerge with nary a scratch! Arlen Specter would pull a pull a 'magical theory' out of thin air while a friendly shill would pull an equally 'magic bullet' out of his ass.

The government had a problem! Lee Harvey Oswald would have to be tried for the crime of murdering the President. For quite some time in our history, those charged with crimes were given trials. The government had not yet figured out that if you just call them a bad name (terrorist) you can dispense with all those niceties. Someone, somewhere was alarmed! What if Lee Harvey Oswald should get a good lawyer and mount a strong defense! What if Lee Harvey Oswald proved his charge that he was just a patsy!

--Why Lee Harvey Oswald Had to Die!

As things 'went down', the government was left with a live patsy against whom it could NOT have made a case. There was a bullet --a 'magic' bullet --that would have been thrown out of court for lacking 'bona fides'. The fall guy had to die!

Like the fatal flaws in the official conspiracy theory of 911, the holes in the government's JFK story are fatal.

• No competent or sane sniper/hit man would choose to shoot anyone from the TSBD. The 'view to a kill' was obscured by branches and leaves as photos taken that day prove! It was and remains the worst of several possible locations!
• Zapruder frame 313 proves conclusively that the fatal shot came from the front, the so-called Grassy Knoll
• No sniper in his right mind would choose a kill spot providing no possibility of egress or escape! Oswald would have had to have ditched his rifle and run down some six flights! No 'hit man' would have tried it! It's stupid! The place would have been 'sealed'!
• I have visited Dealy Plaza! The picket fence afforded cover, egress and a clear unobstructed shot of the 'target' from a distance about one third that of a site in TSBD.
• From TSBD, the motorcade is moving laterally and then away; from the picket fence, the target's lateral motion relative to the 'shooter' is minimal. A non-expert could have made the shot but, in fact, it was an expert who did!

I interviewed a witness to the JFK murder many years after the fact. Rosemary Willis was but a child on that fateful day and her story has been ignored by the mainstream media. When we met, she produced several boxes of color slides that had been taken by her father --Phillip Willis --that fateful day in Dealy Plaza.

--Exposing Lies About the FED, the CIA, the Murder of JFK

The story of these slides is a complicated one. The bottom line is this: the slides were tampered with while in the possession of the FBI. Before the slides were seized by the FBI, Look Magazine published one of the slides on a double-page spread. During my interview with Rosemary Willis, I compared the slides with a double-page spread that had run in Look Magazine before the slides were taken.

Over a double-page spread in Look Magazine, a train on the railroad tracks is clearly visible beyond the infamous pergola atop the grassy knoll. But --in the slides that were returned by the FBI, there are no train cars to be seen!

The railroad tracks figure prominently in the assassination. It was amid freight cars on those same tracks that several 'tramps' --dead ringers for Jeb MaGruder, Frank Sturgis and Howard Hunt --had been arrested before the assassination.

Only the FBI had possession of the slides and only the FBI could have removed the train from the photos! And only the FBI might have had motive to do so!

And what was it the FBI hoped to conceal? Simply, the tramps had not been tramps at all but assassins having connections to the CIA. The slides slipped through the cracks just long enough to have been published by Look. The 'train' was not intended to be seen. Otherwise, why would the FBI have removed the train from the slides? The FBI would not have bothered to tamper with slides that did not incriminate them in some way. A train and box cars are incriminating if and only if they were of some use to the assassins of JFK.

"I didn't have anything to do with the assassination, didn't know anything about it," he said during one of them. "I did my time for Watergate. I shouldn't have to do additional time and suffer additional losses for something I had nothing to do with."
But now, in August 2003, propped up in his sickbed, paper on his lap, pen in hand and son sitting next to him, he began to write down the names of men who had indeed participated in a plot to kill the president. He had lied during those two federal investigations. He knew something after all. He told St. John about his own involvement, too. It was explosive stuff, with the potential to reconfigure the JFK-assassination-theory landscape. And then he got better and went on to live for four more years.

--ERIK HEDEGAARD, The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt, Rolling Stone

Those assassins, I believe, were supervised that day by E. Howard Hunt assisted by George H.W. Bush who was photographed hanging around the front entrance of the TSBD, perhaps making sure that his 'men' were in their places, awaiting their cues. 'All the world's a stage'!
Later this man's near moronic son would preside over traumas perhaps equal to an assassination of a legitimate and duly elected President. Bush Jr would become complict in a stolen US election and the felonious attack upon ballot re-counters in the 'banana republic' of Florida, controlled by yet another Bush, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who signed Executive Order 01-261 on September 7, 2001 just four days before the WTC tragedy of 911. J. Bush's order paved the way for a declaration of martial law in the state of Florida, delegating to '...the Adjutant General of the state of Florida all necessary authority....to order members of the Florida National Guard into Active Service.'

“I hereby declare that a state of emergency exists in the state of Florida...The Authority to suspend the effect of any statute or rule governing the conduct of state business, and further authority to suspend the effect of any order or rule of any government entity...The authority to seize and utilize any and all real or personal property as needed to meet this emergency...The authority to order the evacuation of any or all persons from any location in the State...The authority to regulate the return of the evacuees to their home comunities...I hereby order the Adjutant General to activate the Florida National Guard for the duration of this emergency.”

--Florida Governor Jeb Bush, September 11, 2001

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites

_________________________________________________________________________________

Who Owns America and Why!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Always severely divided in one way or another, the U.S. has become two nations --one of the very,very rich elite on the one end and the rest of us on the other. The rich have literally waged war upon the poor since the nation's founding. The so-called 'Robber Baron Era' was notable for preceding and causing the Great Depression.

Income and wealth disparities are even worse now! As a direct result of Reagan/Bush tax cuts benefiting only the upper classes just ONE PERCENT of the U.S. population owns more than 95 percent of everyone else combined. Poverty is higher among every minority group. A 'ruling elite' of just one percent is primarily White Anglo Saxon Protestant.

...two Americas...one privileged, the other burdened...one America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks.

--Sen. John Edwards

Edwards was absolutely correct and, if anything, understated the problem. It is not surprising that the ruling elites, the establishment, and the fossilized leadership of the GOP would respond with yet another label: class warfare! If 'class warfare' it be, then 'bring it on'!

The current numbers should be compared with figures from 1998 when information provided to the IRS indicated that the richest 1 percent of U.S. households owned 38 percent of all U.S. wealth. Clearly --the Bush years were disastrous for the economy and must certainly be among the factors responsible for the current 'financial crisis'.

Up until the early 1970s, the U.S. actually had lower wealth inequality than Great Britain, and even than a country like Sweden. But things have really turned around over the last 25 or 30 years. In fact, a lot of countries have experienced lessening wealth inequality over time. The U.S. is atypical in that inequality has risen so sharply over the last 25 or 30 years.

--An Interview with Edward Wolff, The Wealth Divide: The Growing Gap in the United States Between the Rich and the Rest

Please note that the figures cited for wealth distribution are accurate as of the date of the 'interview' excerpted. More current figures are stated earlier in this article.

The transfer of wealth upward is a contraction of the supply of money among those who are most likely to spend or invest monies in ways that drive the economy. Supply-side economics has never stimulated the economy. In every instance, 'supply side' economic policies have precipitated recessions/depressions. Tax windfalls --clearly --were not invested in new jobs or expansion; rather, they were 'exported' to offshore accounts. Until the current crisis, the most notable examples were the Great Depression of '29 and the two year long depression triggered by Ronald Reagan's infamous tax cut for his rich backers in 1982. It is not surprising that Reagan's supporters would opine: 'He made us feel good about ourselves'. Well, if not 'good', then 'richer'!

Appalling poverty and the declining value of currency defined ancient Rome. When the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the empire to Didius Julianus, a nobleman, the sale was transacted in greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman sesterces. The U.S. dollar, today, is propped up by China so that U.S. citizens can buy Chinese stuff at Wal-Mart. That's because the US is at the very bottom of the CIA's World Fact Book with the world's largest NEGATIVE current account balance, formerly called the balance of trade deficit.

The U.S. is already a Vassal State of China and the impending fall of 'America' will simply 'formalize' a collapse that seems already concluded. When only the ruling elite have a place to live, the more overt symptoms will become increasingly apparent.

---

---

U.S. Patriot Act: 'Tea Baggers' are Domestic Terrorists !

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Tea Baggers and on-air personalities who have threatened President Barack Obama with death are 'Domestic Terrorists' as defined by the U.S. Patriot Act. Threats against Obama are up 400% over those against Bush and according to many sources, the Secret Service is not able to keep up.

A recent exchange on YouTube convinces me that it is time to to deal with lawless tea baggers while making a point about the rule of law. Those threatening the life of the President have, in fact, sought to '(i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion'. That means that threatening the life of the President is an act of terrorism.

Section 802 (Pub. L. No. 107-52) which expands the definition to cover "domestic". terrorism " ...if the act appears to be intended to: (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion ..."

--U. S. Patriot Act

The Southern Poverty Law Center says that the U.S. has seen a 35 percent rise in hate groups in recent years, and few doubt that the discontent stirred up over the election of an African-American president is fueling the rise in threats. But, could the influx of modern technology also be to blame?

As the cost of computer technology has fallen (and accessibility to high-speed Internet service has spread), more and more people are spending more and more time online. Accordingly, these people are doing what people often do on the Internet: sending emails, communicating in chat rooms and on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, watching YouTube videos, etc. According to results of a recent study by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, these activities seem to be enhancing the scope of extremist groups' reach:

--Report: Secret Service strained to protect Obama

America is as divided now as was England between Protestants and Catholics during the reign of Elizabeth I and, later, James I. James had promised a crackdown after Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament, an act of terrorism. Overt threats to Obama are, in fact, acts of terrorism as defined in the U.S. Patriot Act.

True to form, just like I called it, even before the New Year could began in earnest three more Black men were lynched in America. Somehow, just saying I told you so doesn’t really do it for me. On New Year’s Eve, Johannes Mehserle a White police officer shot Oscar Grant Jr. a 22 year old Black man in his back, killing him instantly as he lay prone and unarmed on a train platform in Oakland California. The incident was caught on tape. It became just the latest public lynching of a Black man in the United States, and it sparked several days of angry rebellion.1

On that very same day, in Bellaire Texas a police officer shot the 23 year old son of Bobby Tolan, a once famous professional baseball player. Robbie Tolan ended up with a bullet lodged in his liver, only because as he stood in the driveway of his own home, a White police officer simply assumed that the car he actually owned was a stolen vehicle.2 Then, hours later on New Year’s Day, nine police officers in New Orleans discharged their weapons 48 times and put 12 bullets into the back of yet another young unarmed African American man; 22-year-old Adolph Grimes was shot dead in a hail of gunfire just a few feet away from his grandmother’s home. A total of 14 bullets pierced violently through his body. ...

All that it requires is the will and the means to take someone’s life. Now, with the election of the first Black man to the highest office in the land, it appears as if some White people across the country have simply lost their minds.

--Death Threats Against Obama - Racist Atrocities Soar As America Regurgitates Its Soul

Everyone threatening the life of President Barack Obama is a terrorist as defined clearly and unambiguously in the U.S. Patriot Act!

A Summary of 'Terrorist' Threats Against President Obama

Anyone making threats against Obama, be they Beck, Billo or Limbaugh should be prosecuted under the provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act!

'deathtotruthers' is a Terrorist as defined by the U.S. Patriot Act

---

How Americans Are Enslaved by a Corrupt Right Wing Machine!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The name of a 'god' and a sacrifice associated with fire, the term 'Moloch' is found in Hebrew and Arabic and other Middle Eastern cultures --Ammonite, Canaanite and Phoenician as well as related cultures in North Africa and the Levant.

In American or modern English usage, the term or 'character' "Moloch" refers to any leader or person requiring costly sacrifices and/or utter enslavement. The term is thus especially applicable to a corrupt, right wing system requiring of its citizenry a virtual enslavement by virtue of diminishing or increasingly prescribed economic roles.

In the US, this is often referred to as being a "wage slave". Most recently, "Moloch" describes not just an extreme right wing establishment but the enslavement of every American who is left behind by GOP tax cuts benefiting just one percent of the population of the nation, the the ruling one percent. Moloch is all-pervasive, effectively denying to all the choice to live otherwise but for and 'in' the omni-present machine.

'Liberal' Means Free but GOP Means Slavery to Moloch

The definition of the term "liberal", muddled of late, has an honorable tradition. "Liberal" is derived from the latin "liber" which means "free". Up to the end of the eighteenth century "liberal" signified "worthy of a free man". Thus we still speak of the "liberal arts", a "liberal occupation". Despite subtle shades of meaning or various connotations, "liberalism" in general remains a "free" way of thinking and acting in private and public life. Its opposite --conservatism --connotes a top-down authoritarian mentality, a doctrinaire, restrained (retarded?) manner of thinking. Conservatism is forever to be associated with fascism, monarchy and dictatorship, i.e -- 'Moloch'!

We are enslaved in three ways:

1. economically by an inequitable system in which 95 percent of the population works to support and enrich a ruling one percent;
2. sociologically by dividing society by wealth, segregating society into walled-off communities, carving up cities into slum dwellers vs the privileged elites who live in gated, walled communities;
3. ideologically with the Orwellian word games designed to facilitate (catapult?) the propaganda which maintains 'Moloch' in his/her roles as both master and devourer!

Modern debasement of the term 'liberal' may be traced to "McCarthy" types who clearly succeeded in associating "liberal" with "Stalinism", "fellow travelers" or communism. Buying into the paradigm implies a tacit agreement to the terminology. It means that we are forced to play by their rules, their definitions.

Moloch is found in various societies throughout history whenever a small number enslaves by force or economics or both a much, much larger general population. That outcome was achieved with the rise of the GOP, most recently with Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr and, later, George W. Bush.

Never perfectly egalitarian, the US was, nevertheless, more equitable under the Democratic regimes of LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and, more recently, Bill Clinton. Clinton had begun a tentative reversal of entrenched trends that had begun with Reaganomics often called supply side' or trickle down' theory.

The Shrub regime assumed the role of Moloch, enforcing and re-energizing economic and ideological oppression by citing a mythical external enemy: Arab terrorists! There is, in fact, no admissible evidence whatsoever that any Arab ever boarded any flight nor hijacked any airliner associated with 911. There is, in fact, no admissible evidence to support any aspect of the Bush 'official' theory of 911. There is no Pentagon wreckage traceable to Fl 77, indeed, any airliner. There was, in fact, no wreckage traceable to Ft 93 recovered at Pennsylvania. Ted Olson told several versions of his 'alleged' phone call from Barbara Olson, at least two of which were mutually exclusive. Simply, Ted lied! 911 was the biggest, the most outrageous, the most venal fraud ever perpetrated upon mankind.

The Bush administration codified its dictatorship with oppressive measures --a 'Patriot' Act --which violates every article of the US Bill of Rights! It was, quite possibly, the most UN-patriotic Act passed since the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Patriot Act violates every LIBERAL, every Anti-Moloch principle that had, until Bush, defined the American republic: the presumption of innocence, due process of law, probable cause, and the separation of powers!
I am, therefore, opposed with every fiber of my being to the party of Bush, Reagan, and Bush! I am opposed to every "anti-free", "anti-liberal" measure that has been forced upon the American people by the embodiment of 'Moloch' --the tyrannical regimes of Reagan, Bush and Bush.
The idea that "people" are sovereign is "liberal". The idea that people are --in fact --born free is "liberal". "Liberalism" is the anti-thesis not only of the "divine right of kings", it is the anti-thesis of dictatorship as envisaged by either Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or, in the US, Bush and the GOP.
The abuse of the term "liberal" is just one more Neo-Nazi lie, typical of the Orwellian political agenda behind it! Liberal is a perfectly good word, an honorable word, a word that I reclaim from a crooked right that deliberately sought to debase it.

I am liberal and, therefore, free!

Minions of the GOP are, conversely, enslaved to Moloch and the lies upon which that shaky foundation rests. No one wins who bargains with Satan.

Among the more pernicious and harmful right wing lies remains 'trickle down theory', sometimes called 'Supply Side Economics'. Clearly --wealth has never, ever trickled down. Labor is the source of value in any economic system. Every major economist from the 'conservative' Ricardo to Karl Marx recognized that fact! This is not a left v. right issue; rather truth vs lies! The exploitation of labor by capital is slavery i.e, 'Moloch'!
Census Bureau: Poverty Rate Rises, Household Income Declines

Although there was a huge increase in real income for average Americans between World War II and the 1970s the income of the average American male has gone essentially unchanged since 1970 as the figure below indicates. Income for females though has continued to rise. What is significant about this graph is that between 1980 and present (2003) the incomes of the top 2% of American wage earners has gone up dramatically despite the stagnation of the income of average Americans.
--Trickle Down” economics was a “Trojan Horse, David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's Budget Director. Also see: Atlantic Online, The Education of David Stockman

Economists quantify income inequalities with what is called the GINI Index. Take a look at Stockman's chart of GINI indices at the link. The GINIS actually moved down between 1967 and 1970, indicating that the economy was moving toward relative equality. Things remained essentially unchanged until 1982, the year of Reagan's tax cut for the wealthy. GINI indices increase, i.e. wealth trickles up steadily from that point. According to Dr. Daniel Weinberg of the Census Bureau, the trend abated briefly in Clinton's second term, but the overall trend toward greater inequality resumed with a vengeance under George W. Bush.

A Free Person's Rapid Response to Ideology and Propaganda:

• Every Democratic President has presided over greater economic and job growth than ANY Republican President since WWII.
• Job growth under Carter exceeded that of Ronald Reagan.
• Reagan presided over the worst recession since Hoover's great depression of the 1930's.
• The Reagan Recession following Reagan's improvident tax cut of 1982 was the longest and most severe since Herbert Hoover's "Great" Depression!
• Wealth trickled up during the Reagan administration primarily as a result of his tax cuts for the rich even as the bite out of middle income checks increased! ONLY the upper quintile prospered. Every other segment of the population suffered in various ways: job losses, loss of income, loss of net worth, loss of homes. Homelessness hit new highs during Reagan's Recession.
• Under Reagan, the incomes of the richest 20% increased 18% while the incomes of the poorest 20% declined a similar amount. Wealth "trickled-up" --NOT down as had been promised by "trickle down" and other fringe theorists!
• Unemployment, high throughout the Reagan debacle, would have been higher had Reagan not doubled the size of the Federal Bureaucracy. Interestingly, he had promised to reduce the size of government. Reagan had to break a campaign promise in order to achieve any success at all.
• Reagan added some two million jobs to the Federal Bureaucracy; otherwise, his numbers would have been even worse than they are. Nevertheless, his performance in this area still pales compared to Clinton who presided over a 2.4% per year increase in jobs during his administration.
• The administration of George Bush cannot be said to have created a single net new job! Unlike Reagan, most of the jobs created during the Clinton presidency were in the private sector. Bush --following policies made famous by Ronald Reagan --was in the hole throughout his incompetent reign of idiocy.
• Best job growth since World War II occurred under four Democratic Presidents: Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Kennedy.
• The worst job growth growth occurred under Reagan, Nixon, and the worst: Bush Sr at a mere 0.6% per year. See: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey. 

---

---